


you'll burn in her sunlight; you'll freeze in her night

by proserpinasacra



Series: ain't it warming you, the world goin' up in flames? [2]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Dynamics, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Snowed In, Soft Jacob, Stitches, Tags Contain Spoilers, Unresolved Sexual Tension, animal attack (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2019-11-05 03:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17910833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proserpinasacra/pseuds/proserpinasacra
Summary: “Joseph talks about you all the fucking time. Lamb of God, snake in the garden, Lion of Judah, sinner, locust…” He tipped a finger under her chin to get a better look at her face. She allowed it. The Deputy met his gaze straight on. The pain filtered through undeniably, but her eyes remained sharply focused. Strong little thing. Fierce and unyielding. “You have the power to bring us all down screaming into hellfire. So he says. You’ve got more things to do here than bleed to death.”(jacob helps rook for nebulous reasons, things only go downhill from there)





	1. Chapter 1

Flurries of snow thrown by the blustering wind chased Jacob into the cabin as he shouldered shut the door behind him. It joined the slow melting slush already pooled at the entryway, evidence of the other occupant’s arrival. He was only a few minutes behind; travel right now was difficult, and the drippings of blood had left a clear trail. The junior Deputy herself crouched in front of the bed in the single room cabin, her eyes pinned on him and a handgun held loosely in her left hand.

Despite the steadily bleeding wound staining the right shoulder of her heavy, ruined coat all the way down to her wrist, and the tense defensive position she held, the Deputy looked like anything but cornered prey. Her eyes shone wild still, and her body held taut- he fully believed she’d jump him if he made a single wrong twitch. Bleeding wounds be damned. It should have been ridiculous, proof that some measure of her pride overrode the common sense to be afraid of him, but from what he knew of her, from all their fleeting encounters so far, Jacob knew better. He couldn’t underestimate her competence. Not even now. He’d seen too many Project soldiers with eyes gouged and throats torn to not know she wouldn’t fight especially dirty with the odds against her.

She glared at him. Dark eyes sought to pierce through him from a sharp face streaked by weariness. A sickly pallor undercut her golden tanned skin, all the more concerning for the frigid weather they’d just escaped. She should have been flushed. Lost too much blood already.

They stared at each other, all silent under the ferocious winds outside.

“I’ll shoot you.” She said finally. Her voice sounded drawn. Compared to her usual even and self-assured tone, it spoke volumes.

“Not before you pass out.”

“You know I’m not the type to swoon, Jacob.”

“You were mauled by a cougar.”

The whites of her eyes flashed as she rolled them, a weak smile tugging at the edge of her lips. “I fought off and killed a cougar, you mean.”

Pride, always, as present as her two braids and her bloodied knuckles. This woman would have gotten herself killed for her pride long ago if she weren’t so Strong.

“That you won doesn’t mean you’re not bleeding out now.”

Her mouth twisted in an ugly grimace, and she tilted her head back to lean against the bed. It exposed the narrow line of her throat down to the junction of her collarbone where her sweater obscured further view. The blood stained her shoulder, dark and shiny. He watched the pulse as more trickled out until she spoke. “Then leave me alone to sleep it off, old man.”

The Deputy was smarter than that, he knew. She either didn’t want him there while she struggled to bandage herself, or the blood loss had already drained her of reasoning. Since she spoke coherently and hadn't lost that worrying of an amount yet, he guessed the former.

Pride, pride. If he hadn’t seen how brutally she’d run the first trial, if he hadn’t seen the violent fury simmering behind those eyes, he’d have said John guessed her sin wrong. But John seemed to have her right, in a way Jacob didn’t like at all. Thinking you knew the enemy that well led to dangerous overconfidence. Jacob didn’t care about her sins. Only how they intersected with her chances of survival.

“Not the sort of thing you can sleep off, wildcat.” He countered as he strolled closer, deliberate and watching for any twitch of her gun hand. Her left wasn’t dominant, but at this distance that hardly mattered. When he cleared half the distance she dropped her head forward, chin almost to her chest, and glared at him through her eyelashes. But her hand didn’t move. He settled into a crouch before her, not yet low enough to be at even eye level. The cold outside made his joints ache something fierce. It didn’t phase him anymore. “Pride is a weakness when it threatens your survival. The pack depends on one another. It’d be hobbled by the loss of any of its strongest.”

She bared her teeth at him. Her jaw clenched tight; he could see the jump in her cheek before she spoke. “Not in the mood for another lecture, Jacob. Bring out the powerpoint later. And maybe spice it up. Got a little bored staring at your vacation photos last time.”

Her breath came wavering towards the end, with her taking a quiet gasp to keep going. He didn’t bother stifling a grumble of impatience. He shouldn’t have to argue to keep her alive. He shouldn’t even be here now making an attempt. Should’ve let the wildlife take care of her. He’d been taunting her over the radio when the cougar first pounced, their back and forth quickly lost to a jumble of her shouts, the animal’s yowls, and finally static. It had been a bizarre twist of luck when one of his hunters immediately reported hearing the commotion, and Jacob found himself out the door before formulating anything resembling a plan. The snow began to fall, and he set out towards the hunter’s position anyway. He should have found her dead. Should have returned to St. Francis when she wasn’t. Should have gone right back and let her sort her own mess out.

But, but-

Joseph wanted her alive. Despite all the problems she caused, Jacob would follow the order. He shook his head, jaw tight as he watched her stubbornly cling to consciousness.

“Joseph talks about you all the fucking time. Lamb of God, snake in the garden, Lion of Judah, sinner, locust…” He tipped a finger under her chin to get a better look at her face. She allowed it. The Deputy met his gaze straight on. Her pain filtered through undeniably, but her eyes remained sharply focused. Strong little thing. Fierce and unyielding. “You have the power to bring us all down screaming into hellfire. So he says. You’ve got more things to do here than bleed to death. You’re stronger than that.”

More things including killing him, supposedly. He watched the flicker of her face, how the anger flashed through her eyes and she grew ever tenser, deathly still like a wildcat waiting to pounce. She’d be a fearsome thing to be killed by, on the bizarre chance all of Joseph’s prophesying ended up right. Jacob wasn’t concerned either way. The current objective sat before him, bristling with vicious energy and her eyes alight with fire.

His fingers slid back, slipping to the side of her neck until he could feel her pulse. Steady. Not yet frantic. He wanted to push her to it and see what rise he could get out of a woman that played at such control and strength. But not now.

Her eyes never left his face the whole time he examined her. Finally, she tipped her head towards his hand, mouth dangerously close to his radial like she might bite him. Her restlessness practically radiated off her, giving every point of contact between his fingertips and her cold skin an imaginary sting. Her breath ghosted across the inside of his wrist when she spoke.

“So what the fuck is it you want.”

“I’m gonna stitch you up. And you’re not gonna shoot me for it. Nice and easy.”

“Then what, I wake up in the Grandview again? Or trapped with Pratt in St. Francis?” Her glare increased in intensity, and he knew that if he wanted to get any further, he’d be forced to give his word. He withdrew his hand; she sat up straighter.

“No. Not now.” The suspicion didn’t leave her face. “My hunters will bring you in when it’s time.” Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that answer any better than he liked giving it, it seemed.

“You’re not gonna leave me alone unless I actually shoot you.”

“No.”

“Fine. Don’t wanna spend the night here with your corpse and I don't feel like finding another cabin either.”

“Take off the jacket.” Despite the command, and the responding curl of her lips in a silent snarl, Jacob shifted to sitting behind her so he could help as she began tugging at the zipper. He pulled the shredded fabric off her shoulders slowly, and she didn’t cry out, though he could see her jaw clench. The synthetic fabric made a sticky tearing sound as it pulled away from the gashes. He inspected what he could see, but she actually wore a reasonable number of layers for the weather.

“I need to cut off your sweater.” And the thermals she wore underneath. “Unless you think you can get your arm above your head.”

She actually lifted it, almost to parallel with the ground- before paling further and dropping it back down, all without making a sound. More than he guessed most others would try. “Cutting it is, then.”

“You want to sit behind me with a knife out.” The pure venom in her flat tone almost made him laugh.

“Sweater’s in the way, honey. Not gonna get a good stitch like that.” She hadn’t agreed to stop arguing when she’d agreed to let him help her. She probably didn’t even know how to stop, no matter how much he threatened. He saw her left hand clench a fraction tighter around her gun. The fingers of her right looked tinged with blue.

“Then give me your 1911. And the rifle. I don’t want you looming around me with all that and the knife.”

“I had them on me in the meadow. Weren’t so cautious then.” In the meadow. It sounded so falsely idyllic like that, considering they’d each been one too-fast motion from tearing each other’s throats out. Their positions paralleled it almost exactly, too, with her sitting all tense and riled up between his legs. There was more blood now, though there hadn’t been a shortage of it last time.

“It was- equal then. I’m somewhat down an arm. I need to level the playing field.”

It didn’t surprise him she believed they were even then, both with full arsenals and at close range. What did surprise him was that he believed her. He didn’t know how a fight starting at touching distance would end up. He’d seen too many of her victims, too many grainy surveillance videos of her moving lightning fast and precise in her killing to believe it would be easy taking her out in melee combat. That in itself was novel. A problem for another time. The others she fought were weak. He wasn’t.

He ground his teeth together. The suggestion that being disarmed would make him level with her as she actively bled out, however, he didn’t believe. If he could pin her down, the fight would be over. She’d make herself pass out by struggling. Jacob slung his rifle over his head, and removed the handgun from the holster at his thigh, placing them on the floor. She immediately twisted to kick them away where they skid into the far wall, out of both their reach. More strength lingered in her than he’d guessed. He grunted in protest, grabbing at her uninjured arm reflexively. Her dark eyes leveled to his.

“You can take out the knife now.”

He let go of her to do so with a derisive shake of his head. Without bothering for any preamble, he pinched the bottom hems of her sweater and thermal together, then sheared upwards with his hunting knife, the fabric cutting with no resistance. She shivered, and he watched as goosebumps blossomed up her back with every inch exposed. The diffuse light of sunshine through snowfall filtering in through the windows revealed precious details, a picture of her chaos in the county and her life before. Bruises ranging from yellow to deep purple stained her skin in intermittent splotches. A bandage patched the soft curve from her waist to her left hip. A years faded scar poked down from the base of her hairline, but that one he’d noticed before. He followed every bump of her vertebrae up to the hollow between her shoulder blades. The bones seemed so delicate, even surrounded by tense lean muscle that shifted and flexed under her skin as she moved. Her flesh was cold where his knuckles brushed against it; another suppressed shudder ran through her.

He pushed the split fabric slowly over her shoulders, pulling the wool from the open wounds. The sports bra she wore didn’t intersect with the gashes, only interrupted the smooth expanse of her back with faded black fabric, so it could stay.

Deep bite marks gouged both the front and back of her shoulder. The cougar had gotten its whole maw around her, and she’d fought it off anyway. It would have been a sight to see. Blood still pulsed from the wounds, all dark and glistening in the soft light. Not fast enough she was in imminent danger, but enough to need closing soon. Jacob rummaged around in his pack for the first aid supplies, and then mopped the excess blood with her sweater before dropping it over her shoulder into her lap. She made a quietly disgruntled noise, and he chuckled under his breath. Her retaliation consisted of trying to elbow him with her left arm, which he grabbed and placed back at her side.

“Keep still now.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Her voice sounded so tired, so weak and verging on slurred. The same vivid spirit that taunted him, but dampened down by pain and exhaustion. A red heat washed through his senses, sharply sudden and with no warning, rage and desperation muddling the clinical detachment he assigned the whole situation. She’d live. She would. No need to get worried over some stubborn soldier who refused to listen time and again, who spat in the face of the Project, who moved so gracefully and dangerously, who stared at him like she wanted to take him apart.

He took a steady breath through his nose. He kept his face impassive with ease. Jacob wrestled with his words as he busied his hands with the first aid kit.

“Stay with me, wildcat. Don’t go falling asleep.”


	2. Chapter 2

Gracie’s head lolled against the bed frame, eyes fluttering shut, even as Jacob’s words rang softly in her ears. There were compelling reasons to keep alert, namely the six foot whatever murder cultist breathing her air, but the rhythmic tug-pull of his stitching along with the blood loss and general exhaustion from hiking here through the rapidly falling snow afterwards all made it difficult to focus. Though, as soon as the thought crossed her mind— that she was losing to her own body— she forced herself to open her eyes and tipped her head to peer over her shoulder at Jacob. He looked focused on his work, but met her gaze for a brief moment before returning to it.

It hurt. All of it hurt. A deep ache echoed through her whole body, but her shoulder-- the deep fiery pain stabbed into her again and again, now punctuated with the tiny pinpricks of the needle. She breathed through it, focusing intently on not giving in to the pain. She was better than that. She forced her mind away from it, to better, more pressing, distractions.

“You said Joseph said… I need to be alive.” Gracie didn’t like the idea of that. She didn’t like that Joseph thought he was pulling strings, that he may have plans for her. “So you’re doing this for him?”

It felt heavy saying it. Heinous in that she even expected an answer, like the close proximity would make them everything they weren’t and he would give her a definitive response. But even like this she couldn’t help trying to wrangle anything she could. She hated an information vacuum. Only silence answered her for a long damn time, long enough her eyes started to feel heavy again, and she needed to press most of her focus on keeping them open.

“He said we couldn’t kill you outright.”

That wasn’t the same as letting her die by negligence. Not by a long shot. She inspected his eyes curiously, and when he didn’t meet hers, his face. The same scars she’d been so fascinated by in the meadow, up close again and this time with no chance of them jumping apart at the crackle of a radio. He wouldn’t mess up her stitches like that.

Some bone deep instinct still screamed at her to _fightfightfight_. Most of her was too exhausted to obey the order, but the urge lingered and made her fingers tingle with anticipation. He set off a thousand warring impulses in her, some sated by the current closeness and some convinced even this wasn’t enough. She needed to worm inside him and learn all his intricacies, needed the heady satisfaction of knowing and winning. Her head leaned back against the bed, but she felt less on the verge of passing out. Too busy watching his face. If she could force herself to memorize every fine wrinkle and discolored divot and the exact color of his beard, maybe that would provide enough for her brain to be full up with instead of the pain.

Gracie didn’t even have to wonder how she ended up here again, encircled by his legs with his hands on her. The first time she’d pushed the matter. This time he had. It was his turn. She licked her lips; the dry winter air of Montana didn’t agree with her. As she did, the sharp memory of exactly how close they’d gotten the last time they met forced its way through her senses, so she barreled quickly into her next question to quell the thought.

“Do you believe him?”

There was another long pause, a frustrated huff of breath. “The collapse is upon us. It’s long been coming. We’ve grown too weak, too arrogant… don’t know if my brother hears a Voice, but I do know we’re all on the breaking point.”

At least he was honest. “And where do I fit into that?”

The pricking stopped, and she wondered if he was done or if he hadn’t expected her to be so brazen in her shoddy information gathering tactics.

“He thinks you’re the catalyst for the end of the world. Unless you repent.” His voice went heavier, and lacked the usual forceful note. It pricked her ears, made her hyper aware of the moment, of every tingle on her skin and the quiet breathing between them. The ominous words hung in the air, and for once, she didn’t bother searching his face for answers. The reality of Joseph’s beliefs sent her nerves on edge, though the honesty from Jacob made things the slightest bit steadier. And it didn’t matter, did it? Joseph could think what he wanted about his prophecy and the end of the world, but she had a job here. It wasn’t practical to worry about the fictional why of this when there were far more tangible things happening.

He grunted, scattering the remnants of her unease, then continued. “Gotta turn you around now and stitch the front.” Jacob mumbled, fingers coming to rest low on her right shoulder blade. She could feel the warmth over the general throbbing ache of the area.

“Mm.” Gracie lilted again to the side to lean against the base of the bed, allowing herself a brief minute of closing her eyes. He wouldn’t kill her right now, not halfway through a self-appointed task. “How about you move around me, big guy? I’m really so comfortable here.”

She heard him scoff, but rustling followed it up, and she felt his presence shift. There was a moment of shuffling as he tried to arrange himself around her, and she decided watching would be more fun than the ten seconds of rest she’d get with her eyes closed. It was. He held his small bag of first aid supplies in one hand and used his other to help maneuver along the ground, examining her unmoving figure with furrowed brows like a puzzle he needed to fit into. It was, strangely, ridiculously, a hint endearing.

Jacob gave her a sharp look when he noticed her peering at him, one she met with a weak smile. Pressing off her left hand, she rotated to face him and twisted at the waist to drape both her legs over one of his so she could still lean back while giving him straight on access to her shoulder. He huffed out one of his almost-laughs, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with the barest of smiles.

“There you go. Even though you were the one that was supposed to move.” She couldn’t get rid of her cheeky little smile, despite how tired she was. “Now get back to work, doctor.”

“Don’t get too used to this.” He grumbled, tone contradicting the amused look in his pale eyes.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She said with an airy sigh, closing her eyes again and trying to block out the sting as he began disinfecting the gashes. There really was no chance she’d get used to it. She took care of her own wounds, on principle. And even her easy, joking friendship with Sharky didn’t involve this much touching, nor the one with her longest friend in the county, Joey. It set her on edge, intrinsically, like her body was screaming at the unfamiliarity doubled on top of the very real threat Jacob presented. But if she could ignore the pain, and the fighting impulse he set off, it was a moderately comfortable position, for all that she was on the floor trapped between an old dusty bed and Jacob Seed. With her knees slung over his thigh, and his larger form blocking much of the cold air in the room, a slow warmth began to seep into the points of contact between them, forcing Gracie to realize that the rest of her was absolutely fucking freezing.

It had gotten colder; the diffuse light dimmer than earlier as the sun filtered through the snowstorm howling outside. A shiver ran through her, pricking goosebumps all over her exposed skin.

“Keep that in control when I start on the stitches.” Jacob warned. “You don’t want me slipping.”

“Well, it’s fucking cold and you broke my sweater.”

His gaze drifted down her front, as if he’d forgotten knifing open her clothes, and his hands stilled, antiseptic wipe pressed to her shoulder. She didn’t squirm under his gaze, but watched the clench of his jaw and the flicker of his pupils as his eyes roved over the old scars and new bruises scattered over her abs, the bandage at her waist obscuring a recent bullet graze, the press of her low slung jeans into her skin. He looked back up at her, expression sharp. “Deal with it.”

Rook narrowed her eyes. Anger blossomed hot and familiar in her gut. “If I shiver and you poke me wrong, I’ll punch you in the throat and even with my left hand, it will hurt you very much.”

They glared at each other. Keeling over and passing out seemed more and more appealing to Gracie as time went on, but she didn’t like to lose and she certainly didn’t want to be poked unnecessarily. Finally, with a long-suffering groan, Jacob shrugged off his army jacket, then leaned forward to drape it over her, arms around her back.

The motion put him very, very close.

Her head turned instinctively to keep him in sight, pulse jumping with the alarm that now, now, now, it was time to fight. But his icy cold eyes betrayed only a quiet intent on his task, and some residual annoyance at her goading. His dog tags swung forward to clink against her sternum, and Rook suppressed another shudder at the cold metal touching skin. Jacob settled the jacket over her left shoulder, letting the rest drape down her back. She could feel his breath on her neck. Her skin tingled with goosebumps in its wake. He adjusted the jacket once, hand slipping under her arm, brushing passed her waist, to pull the right sleeve forward into her lap, then sat back. He smiled, full teeth, cold and deadly. Not the same as the smaller kind of smile that made his eyes crinkle.

“Gross.” She said flatly before receding into it as best as she could without blocking his access to her wounds. It smelled like blood and smoke. Nothing pleasant besides a lingering note of pine, but alarmingly familiar to her by this point.

“Don’t shiver.”

“Don’t fuck it up.”

The stitching was harder to ignore this time, and she couldn’t tell if she was feeling better or worse. Only stuck in a hazey, tired state, with bouts of dizziness between the relative clarity. Jacob was also harder to ignore this time. Not that she ever tried. He sat so close— she had a hand in that, legs over his still— and face to face meant she didn’t have to twist to watch him. The scars on his hands extended up his arms, as far as she could see with his grey sleeves pushed halfway to his elbows. There were others among the smooth burns, straight knicks and claw marks and something jagged on his inner forearm. Her focus roved over him before settling back on his hands. They were rough with callouses from years of marksmanship; they could easily fit around her throat and squeeze. He worked deftly at the stitches, and she watched the pierce, tug, pull of the needle through her own skin for a long moment.

“Ugh.” Her head began to throb too, a counterpoint to the pulsing pain in her shoulder and the dull ache over the rest of her. “I need to drink some water.”

“I’m not stopping you.” Except for the fact he kept repeatedly stabbing her, and her legs were all tangled with him. She rolled her eyes.

Rook tucked her gun carefully into the back of her jeans, then wiggled her fingers towards her backpack several feet away. She pursed her lips before instead digging through Jacob’s nearby bag until she found a canteen. He scowled, but didn’t tell her off as she unscrewed it one-handed and proceeded to drain half in several long gulps. It cleared her parched throat, and in some placebo way made her head and the rest of her feel a margin better. When she lowered the canteen, Jacob was staring at her intently. His pupils widened in the low light, leaving rings of dead starlight blue around pitch black. He probably gave the same intense examination to his so-called recruits to intimidate them. It made her skin tight and warm; her blood buzzed with readiness. Not fear, only a molasses slow anticipation of things yet to come. A real standoff between them loomed on the horizon, too far to discern the details of. In the meantime, things stayed tentative. Gracie arched her eyebrows. His expression settled to neutrality. The tension slowly trickled back to their wary baseline as they watched each other. There was something about his stare, something that shot straight through to the core of her. His intensity never wavered, and she fought to match it.

“Bandages now.” Jacob finally broke the silence, and her mind rushed to catch up.

“Right.” She took a second to look down at her shoulder, squinting in the diminishing light. Despite his neat stitches, it’d still scar. The reminder would stay forever, like all the others littering her body. “Fucking cougar.” She faked a wry smile up at him to chase away the fluttery feeling in her stomach, but it became more sincere as a stupid thought occurred to her. “Guess the nickname’s sticking then?”

He laughed softly, all breathy and low, and it tripped a wider self-satisfied smile to her lips. “Didn’t think you’d go out of your way to fight a real wildcat, honey.”

That he didn’t actually use the one she referenced made her laugh. The dangerous thrill of Jacob Seed using the otherwise normal term of endearment ran through her, goading her to keep poking and prodding. She knew he meant it to be condescending, so every time it rang like a challenge to fight, throwing up all her hackles. A good adrenaline rush was always intoxicating; Jacob felt like playing with fire.

He dug some gauze and bandages from his kit, then leaned close again. The laughter died on her lips so she could better watch him, and see the slow methodical way he cleaned the wounds once again, covered them in gauze, and began twining the bandage around her shoulder. His fingers grazed against her skin as he did— her ribs, the inside of her arm, the curve of her neck. She pressed her tongue to the inside of her teeth and didn’t move. Jacob pinned the end of the bandage down and nodded, maybe to himself.

She should thank him. She really probably should thank him. “So can I keep you on call? My very own private doctor?”

“Next time I’m leaving you to the wolves.” He scoffed, smile lingering around his lips all the same.

“I could definitely fight off wolves. Maybe after a nap, though.”

“After a week. I won’t be happy if you tear those stitches.”

“Mm, I’ll do my best. No promises.”

“Didn’t think so.” His cheeks pulled up with a fuller smile. One not entirely pleasant in his craggy face, but not the purposefully leering one either. Gracie brushed an escaped hair behind her ear, fighting back her own grin. She tugged the sleeves of his jacket closer against the cold, then glanced down briefly at her right hand in her lap. It was close enough to his holster, to his knife, that if she lurched forwards quickly, she could yank it free. But she suspected doing anything more strenuous than wiggling her fingers would aggravate the pain already radiating down her whole arm. And she didn’t quite need to. Not now. As she contemplated his thigh holster, Gracie felt her eyes grow heavier and heavier. The warmth of him had permeated her legs; his jacket trapped enough of her own heat that she no longer shivered. She was still twisted at a weird angle to face him and the blood drying on her skin imparted an unpleasantly tacky feeling, but- she was comfortable. The urge to let herself fall against his chest and sleep for a solid day ran through her, smooth and disarming as a rip current.

Reality followed after as an unpleasant tingle down her spine. She couldn’t be here. She couldn’t want to lean closer.

“Okay. Out.” Gracie forced all her focus back onto him, into making her voice sound as steady as possible. Their eyes met magnetically, pinning back on each other in an instant. Her nerves buzzed high, not the fun of playing with danger, but the uncomfortable self-awareness that she wanted it to spiral further and further. And she couldn’t let that happen. She needed the control here. Here, everywhere, over her body, over her mind, over the whole fucking county. “You got what you wanted. Did your duty for Joseph. You can... leave now.”

Jacob’s eyes narrowed, and the whole of his face shifted to that icy distance in one cruel heartbeat. She wondered if he ever got truly angry. She wondered what she’d have to do to push him to that snap. He seemed to run so deep, and so, so far away. His hand landed on her knee, in what would have been a casual touch in any other circumstance. Gracie restrained the impulse to immediately kick him in retaliation. Her leg twitched anyway, muscles jumping under his large hand. He squeezed, and when he spoke, he pitched his voice low.

“I’ve got no qualms about dumping you on the floor.”

Without breaking eye contact, Gracie shifted back and pulled her knees to her chest. He let his hand trail down her leg, palm on her shin and fingers brushing the sides of her calf over worn denim, then let it fall to his lap before he moved from her space with a deliberate slowness.

The absence of his warmth left her bereft.

She leaned back fully against the bed, considering her options with a harshly pounding heart as Jacob gathered his things back into his backpack. He hadn’t moved too far; she could reach an arm out to him with ease. Or kick him. Or shoot him, the distance made it fine that she could probably only hold her left arm up. Focus, focus. Plan. It’d be hell to walk through the snow right now, but Jacob had found her, so his other hunters could too. And for all his help, she didn’t think he’d put out a cease and desist on the seemingly never ending hunt for her. Especially not after her rude dismissal. Then again, they weren’t actively hunting her specifically right now, and maybe the snow would cover the trail. Besides that, even the thought of standing sent her head swimming.

Staying would be best, probably. Then out first thing in the morning. Maybe back to the Henbane, where things should be warmer at the lower altitude. And where Jacob was less likely to growl at her over the radio for ruining his shit.

Gracie watched Jacob stand, unfolding long, sturdy limbs. Just like that, he was back to looming.

“This is mine.” He plucked his army jacket off her shoulder, but was surprisingly decent enough to pause a moment between his pronouncement and actually taking it so she could brace herself against the cold. And, cold it was; she immediately shivered again, the last vestiges of heat leached out of her by the freezing air instantly. He lingered behind her, and for a moment she was too preoccupied with the cold to worry about that. “You have to have something to keep yourself from freezing, Deputy.”

“I have spare clothes in my bag.” And, fuck, she’d really need them, because it was seriously cold enough that her breath condensed in the air in front of her. Sleeping through the night in this did not seem like it would be very pleasant. Any wood outside would be too damp now from the snow, but maybe she could scrounge something for a fire by dismantling the cabinets…

He tossed her backpack over to land in front of her, and she nodded in a quietly surprised thanks. Frantic for warmth but not wanting to look it, she began to carefully sort through the bag one-handed. How the hell she’d get anything on was a problem she’d solve when she got to it. In the corner of her vision, Jacob moved about, quiet despite his size and the creaky wood floor. When he reached the far wall with the door, her attention snapped fully to him.

He picked up his guns from where she’d kicked them and holstered in a practiced motion, immediately sending Gracie’s pulse into a rapid staccato. Things were very real again. The temporary truce felt like it had ended with her earlier words, but now he had all his weapons and faculties while she sat on the floor. Her left hand went to her gun instantly. Gritting her teeth hard against the pain and the spinning light-headed sensation swimming through her head, she forced herself to stand. Her legs trembled, and the pounding in her head ratcheted up to near unbearable. Nausea rolled in her stomach. He turned at the shifting, then watched her progress, eyebrows lowered, expression calculating. She stood. Somewhat shaky on the inside, but standing.

They eyed each other; Gracie idly wondered how many minutes of her life now she’d spent in staring contests with this man.

“So this here is done, then.” She managed finally, fingers twitching on her handgun. “I’m still not letting you take me.”

He looked offended, maybe, something annoyed there in the narrowing of his eyes. “Told you I wouldn’t. I’m getting back to work. You... Other hunters heard your commotion and this little cabin isn’t too far from there. Don’t be here in the morning.”

“I didn’t plan on it.” She scowled, though a heaviness eased in her to know he’d keep his word. He could still turn on her, but this whole encounter had already been an opportunity he didn’t take advantage of. It wouldn’t make sense for him to lie this late in the game.

He lingered another moment. The air between them crackled with things unsaid, but for the life of her, Gracie couldn’t dredge anything up. She felt woozy, disoriented by the intensity in his eyes, an intensity rapidly becoming familiar to her. She pressed her lips together. His gaze ran over her face, to her shoulder, to the wide defensive stance of her legs, back to her eyes. The whole time she watched him, finding it hard to tear herself away or do anything sensible. Finally, he nodded and turned away from her to push open the door.

It didn’t move.

He stopped up short, then pushed again, harder. The wood creaked, but didn’t budge. The next time, he threw his shoulder into it, the whole mass of him behind the shove. Nothing.

Glancing at the windows, Gracie saw the snow had risen to cover them completely while Jacob stitched her up. No wonder it had gotten so suddenly dark.

They were snowed in. 


	3. Chapter 3

“This is unbelievable. This is hellish.”

Jacob got the feeling the Deputy would be pacing if she weren’t already drained. As it was, she looked so riled up he could practically see her vibrating as she stood there, wavering ever so slightly on her feet. He tried the door once more, for good measure, but even slamming his shoulder against it did little more than make the wood creak. With a frustrated huff, he turned away, heading towards one of the far windows instead. The Deputy tensed as he passed by her, and in his periphery, he could see her head turn to track his movement. She stood with her feet shoulder-width apart, left a step in front of the right, and her knees bent. Her left hand stayed wrapped around her glock, finger outside the trigger guard. Always ready, even now.

“Quit it. I’m not starting a fight, and neither are you.” He warned as he inspected the window, only to find further evidence the snow had piled so high there was little chance they’d be getting out any time tonight. It had happened almost unnaturally fast, but in the years since Joseph had brought them here, the weather of Montana had proven itself capricious many times over. He blamed himself for being too focused on her, but agonizing about that wouldn’t help, so he pushed it from his mind.

“I might. Could still shoot you.” He turned to her as she spoke. She tilted her head; he half expected her to fall over with the motion, but of course she didn’t.

“Thought you didn’t want to spend the night with my corpse.”

Her lips curled in a sneer, but for a moment she stayed silent. The gears turned rapidly behind those dark, dark eyes. They seemed to catch and absorb everything, and they fixated on him. “Not keen to spend it with you alive either. How long will the snow take to melt?”

“Hard to tell. Not experienced with snow, Deputy?”

She seemed to contemplate something, then shrugged her uninjured shoulder. “I’m from San Francisco.”

“Different here than back home. You’re a fish out of water.”

Her eyebrows drew together. “You’re one to talk, Georgia.”

He didn’t let the surprise show. He internally cursed Joseph for putting so much personal information in the Book. “You’ve been reading.”

“Some. Know thy enemy and all.”

No matter how far in she’d gotten, she knew more about him than he about her. It wasn’t a position he liked, neither good tactically nor for these interactions in a plainer sense. Even as the resistance gained ground they were still on their back foot, but she surged ahead, never pausing in her rampage. She gave him a mean little smile, all smug and purposefully nasty, and he barely resisted throttling her with a stern reminder of his brother’s plans. “Doesn’t have to be that way. Joseph still wants you to repent and join us, for whatever damn reason.”

“And Faith wants me on her psychedelics and John wants me screaming yes for him and you wanna make me a little toy soldier. You’re all gonna end up disappointed.” She said plainly, then swayed and sat with a short, sharp inhale on the edge of the bed. He jerked a step forward on instinct, but stopped himself before getting any closer. A small cloud of dust from the old bedspread arose around her before settling. He lowered his eyebrows. She still hadn’t put a shirt on, and her skin seemed dangerously ashen. Despite looking sickly and shivering, she fixed him with a renewed glare. “And you’re not gonna use this as an opportunity because I swear I’ll take you down with me if you do.”

Jacob bristled. He said earlier he wouldn’t, and he meant his word, though he knew she had no reason to trust that. Even now her off-hand still clutched her glock in a guarded way he almost admired. And distantly, distantly, almost felt ashamed for.

He knew what he had become over the years; he didn’t need the reminder from a woman almost as prone to violence as he was. “Do you know how to listen? Said I wouldn’t, and I won’t.”

She scoffed, and brushed a hair escaped from one braid back behind her ear. “I’m positive you can suss out why I’m short on trust here.”

“I don’t need your trust, honey.” He growled, partially to watch her face twist into another sneer. “Just need you to not fucking shoot me on accident because you’re all twitchy.”

She surprised him with a cackle. “You think I’d fuck up that bad? You know gun safety is a mildly important part of being a cop.”

“Mildly?”

“Mildly.” The little tip of her head made him laugh, but the hoarse sound died out in his throat as they watched each other. The way she examined him might have been unsettling to someone who gave a shit about their long term survival, because it was all keen analysis overlayed on fiery determination tossed up with that wild rage of hers. Sometimes he could feel her trying to pick him apart, even contemplating the kill.

“No use sitting around.” He grunted, finally, breaking the silence with impatience.

“Well, I’m gonna keep sitting around.”

He shook his head as he turned away, forcing down the smile to focus on looking about the tiny space for supplies worth gathering, and turning his attention firmly away from the Deputy. Jacob learned he could stride the distance of the room in eight paces, and in six the other direction.

Within minutes the last of the light filtering weakly through the top of the snowy wall surrounding them died out, and the interior of the cabin plunged into complete darkness. He lit a lantern from his pack and set it on the table, illuminating the cramped room with a low glow. The flickering light made it somehow feel even smaller, and when lit from their end, the snow seemed even more of a prison.

The tightened feeling of being trapped began to claw at his skin.

There really was no telling how long it would take for the storm to end, and then for the snow to thaw up enough for them to leave. Despite the cold lingering in the air, he could feel flashes of desert heat and a scratching dryness in his throat.

Jacob began to search around the cabin in earnest, examining and assessing the contents of the compact main room that held the bed and fireplace, as well as a small kitchen. Near the bed, a door led to a bathroom, the sole high window inside also blocked by thick layer of snow. He strode back to the center; he could feel _her_ eyes on him intermittently.

He sifted through the cabinets to look at dusty cans of food, and the several jugs of water under the sink, mentally creating an inventory of available calories plus those from his own supplies, divided by an estimate of each of their minimum advisable intake per day, then again with a lower minimum, then again with fasting days between, then again, and again. Jacob methodically gathered all the available food from the cabin onto the battered kitchen table. Next the water, and he ran the same calculations over again, having to account for her smaller size but increased need for fluids due to the blood loss.

“I’m gonna tear open my own stitches just to give you something better to do.” He turned sharply to find the Deputy watching him with keen eyes. She looked serious, and if her statement hadn’t been so ridiculous, he may have believed she was. Given she hadn’t taken any painkillers— he guessed she had some on her, but was too wary to take them around him— the pain she was in was certainly intense. She handled it well. It sparked an interest, along with everything else he’d seen her endure. Of course, now wasn’t the time to test her. He couldn’t control the environment. And he was trapped right alongside her. Jacob strangled down the unsettled feeling, covered it with a mean smile.

“I don’t think you’d like what I’d do to you if you ruined all my hard work.”

She burst out a bubbling laugh, and a harsh grin of her own. “I don’t think you’d like what I’d have to do to you in return.”

“Then you won’t be touching the stitches.”

“Then you’ll come over and stop me.” She cocked her head to the side, eerily reminiscent of a cat watching its prey. As he watched her, he noted the slight tremble to her fingers, the blue tinge to her lips barely noticeable in the low light. At some point the howling of the wind had died down, but with the sun fully descended, the temperature dropped even further.

Heat. An issue all on its own that he’d ignored in favor of the food and water. Weak. Short-sided. Even now as his focused drifted he could feel the cold biting at his ears, stinging at the tips of his fingers. Then again, he couldn’t clearly differentiate the numbness in his hands due to the cold from that of the earlier beginning grips of panic. But he had solid body mass, and two shirts under a jacket, and the Deputy—

A shiver wracked through her body, coursing all through the tense muscles bared by her continued lack of a shirt. She had a sweater draped over her lap, but not on, her hands tangled in the fabric like she’d been contemplating its function. “You’re gonna freeze.”

“Oh, god, I wonder if it’s because of the four billion tons of white bullshit we’re buried in.”

He huffed out a quiet laugh as he glanced around the perimeter of the room, only to confirm a complete lack of supplies other than the ones he’d already clustered on the table. “Can’t go out for firewood.”

“What are the cabinets made out of?”

“Plastic.”

“Floor’s linoleum.” He could see her working through it, even as he also rapidly ran through the rest of the options for warming her up quickly— all the ones besides the obvious. Finally, her sharp face crinkled up with distaste. “This a crap excuse for a _wood_ cabin.”

“Feel like freezing to death, honey?”

He could see her wrestling with her own pride, that scintillating flash of fury behind her eyes before they narrowed dangerously. “Guns off again. I’m keeping mine.”

Stubborn fucking thing. Too smart by half, and both too wary and too dangerous. If Joseph didn’t have a say in it, he would have killed her already. Jacob repeated this in his head, repeated his brother’s warnings and prophecies as he again shucked off his weapons to lay them on the table before sauntering to the bed. When he approached, she stood, despite obviously having caught on to what he intimated. Eventually he stopped before her, and she tipped her chin up to keep their gaze locked. She always forced even ground however the circumstance allowed; Jacob could understand the urge, useless though it was. Her dark eyes pierced into him, dug and burrowed, stabbed in as deep as possible. Jacob loomed in the same way he inducted new recruits, but of course she refused to break first. It seemed as if she were going to submit to him saving her life, again, she at least wanted to win one of their staring contests first. He’d give her a game, if that’s what she wanted.

But at her waist, a radio crackled, jolting them both out of utter stillness. A teenager spoke; the one with the militia.

“Hey, Rook? We saw you around on the monitors earlier, and with the big storm, Eli wanted me to make sure you’re alright. Over.”

Their eyes flicked back to meeting, then in an uneven mirror, they both snapped into frenetic motion. He lunged forward to grapple her the same moment she twisted one step back and grabbed for the radio, bringing it in close to her chest. He turned with her, wide step on her far side, and pushed forward, one hand coming to her left bicep and the other bracing against the mattress when she tugged back hard and pulled them stumbling onto the bed. He settled on his knees above her, jaw tight as he quickly reassessed.

She clutched the radio tight to her sternum with her left arm, and even her injured right draped over too. Her teeth were bared at him; her whole body buzzed with the struggling gasps of a wild energy.

He could hurt her and take it easily, or try and keep her from damaging herself further. Joseph would be disappointed if Jacob irreparably injured her, and she would also be useless as a weapon against the Whitetails. But as things were, any new intel was vital, including the radio frequencies they used, provided he could stop her from tattling long enough to hear anything important. It turned out he didn’t have much of a choice.

He felt her left foot tangle with his right leg and kick out, disturbing the balance he’d settled on his hand above her and forcing him to instinctively release her arm and stabilize himself rather than crash onto her. With surprisingly quick fluidity for her state, she elbowed his ribs hard, shoved out from under his torso in the opposite direction she’d forced him to lean towards, then chucked the crackling walkie at the wall, all with her left arm. It hit with a dull thunk, then gave out one last sad frizzle of static as it hit the floor before falling silent. She collapsed back to the bed underneath him, seemingly not expecting more conflict with the inciting object destroyed.

They stayed there, breathing heavily, as Jacob contemplated exactly why in hell he’d helped keep her alive.

“Whoops.” He focused again to glare at her, but her face had finally taken on a flush befitting the cold. Blotchy red tinged her high cheekbones and a smile curved her lips; the proximity forced him to notice that the sides of her nose scrunched up with it. Her chest rose and fell rhymically as she caught her breath, tan skin and collarbones bared above the curve of her sports bra. Jacob didn’t quite manage a glare, only stunned wariness. “I feel warmer already. Thanks for the help.”  

The laughter forced its way out from him into reality, and she burst into cackles a heartbeat after, face scrunching up further. His throat felt almost raw from it, like he hadn’t genuinely laughed this fucking much in years. And he hadn’t, probably. It died out fast on both their ends, leaving her staring up at him with an inscrutable expression. She blinked, lashes and angular lids briefly obscuring pitch dark eyes. At this distance he could tell the difference between her deep brown irises ringed with inky black around the circumference and her pupils. The lantern flickered warm light across one side of her face and threw dramatic shadows onto her features, but the effect in its entirety screamed  _soft_.

“Don’t think that’ll quite do it, wildcat.” He shifted his knees so he was no longer directly above her, then scooped an arm under her back to pick her up just enough to maneuver. She went tense all over and made a noise of protest, but thankfully didn’t flail or punch him in the nose. Or elbow him. Again.

It held the same feeling as picking up a wolf by the scruff. Or holding an armful of hissing snakes.

He awkwardly shuffled forward and settled her at the top of the bed near the pillows, only for her to immediately sit up and draw her knees to her chest. Despite her statement, she still looked freezing, and combined with the blood loss, he knew that was hardly a good state. Considering the shivering hadn’t stopped, though, her condition wasn’t quite bad enough to warrant urgency— she could handle a little suffering, needed it, maybe— but he did know they should warm her up soon before it got any worse. He could see the tension in her jaw and the line of her shoulders, but didn’t know enough yet to make the distinction between her regular high strung self and her swallowing down the pain.

“This is ridiculous.” She stated, back to her vaguely pissed neutral expression.

“It’d be a waste of suture to let you freeze now.” He shucked off his jacket, feeling more of a chill with one less layer.

“And Joseph would be pissed.”

Jacob glanced at her, but didn’t confirm or deny. The jacket went back around her left shoulder, the one further from him.

“If my little sister tried to boss me around like that, I’d lock her in the pantry. Actually, I have.” She tugged the heavy fabric closer as he huffed out a low chuckle, filing the information away for potential leverage. Though, if the sister was back in San Francisco, that hardly helped. Next came the henley, leaving him in an undershirt and the dog tags, and she glanced over briefly, then back again. “Seriously?”

“You can complain when you can thermoregulate.” She made a face at him, not one of her usual sneers but a close relative of. “Boots.” He tapped the leather-covered steel toe of her work boots where she’d tucked them close to herself.

“I’ve been sleeping with them on.” She said, voice quiet but matter of fact, and he felt a hot pang of anxiety shoot through him, a twisting combination of recognition and horrible memory. He had, too, when he’d first returned stateside. So the Deputy had gotten used to sleeping light, and bugging out on a moment’s notice. Every further confirmation of her skill weighed deeply on him; he needed to run her through the rest of the trials. He needed to contain the threat she presented.

“I’m not having you kicking me in the shins with those damn things on.” He managed in a growl, knowing it wasn’t an easy comfort to give up.

Jacob turned away to toss off his own boots; between him and Deputy they’d thoroughly muddied splotches of the comforter, but it was dusty and old anyhow, the real importance was the blankets beneath. He didn’t take his last shirt off. This felt harrowing enough for the both of them; he didn’t need to add more skin to skin contact to it. The thick blankets could make up for not pressing her directly to his body heat. When he turned back, she’d removed her boots, wormed her feet under the layers, and shifted his jacket to cover her front, but hadn’t moved any further. She stared at the opposite window where the lantern lit a vague impression of the packed snow, as far away and unfocused as he’d ever seen her. The corner of her jaw clenched; another shudder trembled through her.

He hooked his arm around her waist, drawing her attention. The Deputy only watched his face as he rearranged them, but she assented to being pulled under the blankets down to horizontal. Her mouth twisted like she’d tasted something sour, and he couldn’t blame her. Everything seemed more precise and more dire here than an active combat situation— and they’d both had plenty of experience in those. “Deputy.” She arched her eyebrows, gaze fixed on his. “Rook.” He hazarded, knowing he’d heard others call her that. The expression on her face shifted back to analytical.

“I’m not much of a cuddler.” She said finally, some sort of explanation as if this wasn’t bizarre for the both of them. But Jacob had a purpose. Joseph had his plans, and they involved her, and Jacob would keep to that. His own discomfort hardly mattered, and neither did hers. There was a bigger picture at play.

 _Supposedly_.

“And you hurt yourself worse with that stunt you pulled.” It was only a guess, though he expected to be right. His ribs ached where she elbowed him, but she had executed half a judo escape with a mangled shoulder.

Her lips pressed flat for a second before she spoke. “Honestly a little hard right now to tell the difference between the hurt from that and from everything else. It’s manageable.”

“You’re not getting much warmer like this anyway, should take the pressure off it.” Both were true, but that didn’t quite prepare him for the reality of her actually turning away from him to rest on her side, and the reflexive draw of him following to curve around her. He draped his arm over her bare stomach, gritting his teeth as he felt just how cold she when every line of her lithe body slotted to his. There was a moment of arranging, where she tugged a pillow closer, and he tucked her head below his chin, and their legs bent and tangled together, then they settled, both scarcely breathing for a dragging series of heartbeats as they waited for the other to snap or the universe to implode. Neither happened. She was edges and angles, hard muscles and tension, but he had her in his arms.

Her bandaged shoulder rest in front of his chest, and he was careful not to brush up against it, but was pleased to see no bloody indication she’d torn the stitches when they briefly grappled. The fight stuck with him, not for her fast reflexes or intuitive thinking, but how for the briefest moment after she had softened, bright and smiling underneath him as they laughed together. And it was fucking jarring. The moments when her severe face faded to giddy smiles and giggles just about enraptured him. He almost couldn’t fathom how something so like a keen knife’s edge could suddenly bloom into the prettiest damn thing he’d ever seen this close up. It all set him on guard, as if the disarming unexpectedness of her sharp face flashing warm should be as feared as her glares.

He shivered, cold leaching from her skin to his despite the layer he’d kept between them. Then he pulled her closer, because that meant it was working.

Every point of contact stung with an icy chill, though he couldn’t imagine she enjoyed the scarred skin of his arm against her front either. He knew cold, knew that even though he had felt chilled himself, his skin probably felt like fire to her. Her dark hair tickled against his neck where it escaped the two braids, and every few seconds a shudder would send the strands shifting. Even when she was mostly unmoving he was hyper-aware of every inch of her, every single shift and twitch. There was something about her that demanded his attention; her perfected competence and controlled rage always hinted at the single frozen moment before an explosion. Jacob knew well enough how to spot a hidden threat. He wasn’t holding a woman; he was holding a livewire, a loaded gun, a sharpened blade. He needed to keep her and control her, or otherwise take her out of play entirely, yet he knew neither would be as simple as Faith and John seemed to think.

With a seemingly glacial pace, her skin grew less and less frigid under his touch, every degree of heat hard won from his own body until they equilibrated and inched towards warmth together in the shelter of the blankets. She stayed quiet but awake, the sound and feeling of her breathing even and alert. He tugged her a fraction closer, mind burning with thoughts of control and power, strength and weakness.

“The Whitetail on the radio... Don’t start thinking they care about you because they care about you, honey. They’re using you. All you are to them is a tool, a blunt object.” Jacob wasn’t a person meant for soft silences. Any degree of familiarity upset the balance between them, and he needed to maintain the leverage for the sake of keeping his brothers safe.

“Don’t say that like you don’t want to use me the exact same way. Don’t fucking dare.” She shifted just enough to peer at him from the corner of her eyes, voice laced with venom but edged with a softness he assumed arose from exhaustion.

“Eli and his band of cowards are gonna run you into the ground with their pleas for help and then leave you for dead once they’ve gotten what they wanted.” He knew Eli. He knew the man would admire her fire, but do little to stop her from burning herself out. He focused on the big picture. Having the kid ask her if she was okay was a blatant pull for her loyalty. Having the kid there at all pissed Jacob off in general. Now she twisted towards him fully, forcing him to shift and pressing her injured shoulder to his chest in the process. It had to have hurt, but she only stared at him intently in the low light.

“We can test it. I can kill you right now and see how pleased they are with me.” Her left hand came across her body and settled at the base of his throat, slow enough he knew it wasn’t a true threat. Her fingers had warmed some, but they felt cold against his skin. She squeezed, the barest amount of pressure. He didn’t think she could strangle him with one hand, or that she would right now even if she could. So he watched her. “Or if you want to play along with me we can fake your death, see how everything falls from there together.” She released her fingers, but didn’t move her hand from his throat. “But don’t try and manipulate me, Jacob. I’m not in the mood.”

His hand left her waist to encircle her wrist instead, and he brushed his thumb along the artery to balance the threat while narrowing his eyes. “I’m making sure you know the playing field. You think you’re strong enough to make it through this all on your own, wildcat?”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Her eyes lit with a fiery passion, and he could almost pinpoint the exact moment she decided to push back harder. “But maybe I wanna see what _you_ can do. You’re an awful lot of talk. Maybe I wouldn’t have to kill so many of your people if you came and got me yourself the next time you wanted to see me.”

A half smile tugged at his lips, even as his own pride flared up then settled. He wouldn’t let himself be goaded like that; it was beneath him. “Look who’s being manipulative now.”

She grinned, sharp and pretty, all dangerous like a snake lurking in the bluegrass. “Do you want to know my name?”

Jacob paused, thrown but not letting it show. It ended up being a long enough beat she continued on anyways.

“I’m surprised you didn’t get Pratt to tell you. Or that Nancy didn’t give it to you in the first place. Seems stupid to help start a murder cult in a town with less than half a dozen cops and not know all their names.”

“Didn’t think they’d be a problem. And they haven’t been, excepting you.” But the longer it sat the less he liked it. He thought of her in vague terms. _Deputy. She. Her. Trouble. Wildcat._ And it all fit fine, but now that something closer was on offer— “Tell me.”

“Trade me for it.” The grin grew wider, and far too smug for his liking.

He couldn’t parse when they’d jumped from outright threats to teasing to negotiations, but once again she’d proven fast on her feet. They oscillated so rapidly between moods in all their conversations it should have been expected by now, but she continued to find ways to sidestep his expectations. He huffed out a low laugh. “And what is it you want, wildcat?”

“Something interesting, or useful.” Her fingers trailed delicately up the side of his neck, but she hadn’t yet pulled her wrist from his grasp.

Jacob weighed it out, calculating how many expendables he was willing to throw to the wind for this. If they couldn’t survive her they deserved to be culled. He wondered if he even had anyone that _could_ survive her. He could always alter whatever he told her after the fact. Here was the opportunity to test her. “Guard rotation at the FANG center changes every five hours, starting at oh four hundred.”

She rolled her eyes. “I could have found that out myself. Besides, you can change that with a single transmission.”

Fair enough. He gave her his own leering smile, and let go of her wrist to run a finger along the beginning of a braid and down the back of her head to where it hung free behind her. Jacob didn’t usually get as close as John liked for physical intimidation, but seeing as how she was already here… he drank in the transition of rage to amusement to something like anticipation that flickered over her face when he gently tugged the braid at a point a few inches from the base of her neck, just hard enough to force her head to tilt minutely. “Alarms in the opening gateway and the southeast enclosure. Three M2 nests, a sniper, and two VIPs. You can get Armstrong to a sniping position on that damn burger sign, but she’ll be spotted real quick unless you’re already in there causing chaos.”

The Deputy seemed to think it over before humming an affirmative and inching closer. Close already, he could count individual eyelashes even in the near darkness. His hand found the back of her neck, fingers brushing against silk smooth hair as he sought to keep her there, to keep her from changing her mind. “Alright…” She licked her bottom lip, movement magnetizing his attention as surefire as a gunshot. “Grace Aiko Rook. Gracie.”

He hadn’t bothered expecting anything, but it settled in his mind all the same. “So that’s why you and Armstrong are friends.”

She stared at him a moment before a short, startled laugh bubbled from her lips. “Was that a joke?”

He meant to release her, but instead his hand merely slid down between her shoulder blades, feeling the worn fabric of her bra and the edges of the bandages he’d applied. Her name pounded staccato in his head like a heartbeat, endless in repetition. Gracie, Gracie, Gracie. Soft and whispery, all flowing curves to her severe tension. “Thought Rook was short for Rookie.”

Some of the amusement drained from her face, and she rolled her eyes. “Yeah, apparently in Midwestern cop humor that overlap is hilarious.” Her tone said she didn’t agree. He suddenly wanted to interrogate Pratt on the dynamics of the former Hope County Police Department. “And I’m sure you know, tactically, why I drag Grace around.”

“You rely heavily on CQC. Need a sniper watching your six.”

She quirked her eyebrows, dipped her head in a slight nod. She hadn’t moved back yet. He wanted to ignore how close she was, though it was near the only thing he could focus on. The presence of her could flood out all his senses and she wasn’t even doing anything besides staring in that scrutinizing way of hers. He tugged on the end of her braid again for something, anything, to reestablish the reality between them. The reality they were both ignoring by being here chatting.

Gracie rolled her eyes, then rolled back onto her side. Jacob stared at the spot she vacated, vague patterns on the ceiling distant, before turning towards her and wrapping his arm around her waist again, driven more by stuttering impulse rather than actual thought.

“It was nice negotiating with you, Seed.” The words rang strangely in the darkness, like she’d meant to say something else, like the words meant something else. He wanted to see her face. She yawned, then wiggled and stretched her legs, then curled up; he waited while she readjusted herself before drawing close again, knees slotting behind hers, the curve of his body following hers entirely. This time she was warm there in his arms, and when she spoke she sounded more like herself. “Maybe next time I’ll fight you for big spoon.”

Despite not having heard the term before, he got the idea of what she meant pretty fast. He snorted and shook his head, rubbing his thumb absently along a raised scar he could feel running parallel her ribs. “Don’t think we’ll be making a habit of this, honey. Unless you plan on violently communing with your fellow wildcats some more.”

She laughed, soft and tired. Jacob was— calm. He didn’t think now would be the time she’d make an attack, though in reality he wouldn’t put it past her. But there was just enough ease between them for him to feel settled there, with her. She didn’t say anything more, and for longer than he could accurately keep track of they both simply stayed there, offset breaths the only sounds in the contained shelter of the cabin. Eventually, her breathing evened out enough he could confidently guess she’d fallen asleep.

He was prepared to spend most of the night awake; he didn’t sleep much in the first place, and unfamiliarity generally made it worse. And she complicated everything further.

Jacob could agonize about her for hours, twisting and analyzing every bit of conversation and facial expression trying to tease out any relevant information she may have let slip, but more likely trying to break her apart in his mind and pore over every piece of her. He forced himself to think of the correspondences he shared recently with his brothers and Faith, instead, and of guard rotations, of supply lists and recruitment numbers, of the lists of the dead, and of every outpost’s fortifications and individual needs, of the ongoing preparations of the bunkers.

He counted her breaths. He tried not to think of her. Eventually, surprisingly, he followed Gracie into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops sorry here it is


	4. Chapter 4

When she woke, it was pitch dark. Something was holding her down. There was a single disorienting moment of grogginess, followed by too-sharp clarity and a jolt of cold panic. Her body jerked up into immediate readiness as she tried to scramble, limbs flailing and prioritizing a quick list in her mind. _Boots, gun, bag, go, go, go._ A strong arm— _that_ was the foreign heavy weight around her torso— tugged back and tightened hard, hard enough her ribs screamed, and she jabbed out wildly with her elbow, prompting a waking gasp, followed by a low pitched groan. The grip lessened, not enough for her to escape, then a figure loomed over her, a hazy shape in the darkness.

“Gracie, _Gracie.”_ Jacob Seed’s roughened voice curled around her name like gunsmoke and she froze, taking two gasping breaths before stopping entirely, clenching her jaw as she tried to will her heartbeat down with a slow, deliberate exhale. Every nerve shrieked danger, but the sharp shock of hearing her name from him forced enough of a shuddering distraction for her to shove down the instinct. Where the surprise of him knowing her name, being here, should have been, instead existed a wary acceptance. She remembered where she was. Why he was here. “Good. Breathe.”

Her heart hammered loud enough to rush in her ears, but she pressed her palm to her chest, inadvertently trapping his dog tags to her skin, and stayed completely unmoving for a thirty-two count of controlled breathing. She tried not to focus on the cognitive dissonance of him praising her like he had in her _trial_ when he’d just been spooning her, either. Or how it felt. He watched her. Eventually, when her pulse evened out, she removed her hand and licked her bottom lip, hating how hoarse her voice sounded. “Usually there’s somewhere to run.”

“I know.” His tone was completely even, but he sounded newly awoken. She could barely discern his outline in the darkness. The lantern he lit must have burnt out, and it either wasn’t late enough in the spring morning for the sun to have risen or they were completely buried still.

 _“Fuck.”_ She groaned, unable to help the exasperation at herself, though she knew the same instincts had been keeping her alive. It was vital to be alert, and aware. It wouldn’t have been the first time she needed to bug out fast, and it wouldn’t be the last either.

“Yeah.” There was a simple acceptance there, and understanding, but it was withdrawn, quieter than his usual forcefulness. He pulled away, and while she thought her heart was done with its panic, she felt it stumble over a beat as he settled back behind her, arm once again finding its way around her waist like this was practiced, or at all within the realm of normalcy. Her skin buzzed with the all over closeness. She felt hazy with it. People didn’t get close to her unless they were actively trying to kill her. In the real world, every one of her touches executed violence, yet he was calm behind her.

“Go back to sleep.” His beard brushed against the back of her neck as he spoke, and she shivered again, though the warmth of him had long since seeped to her. His arm tightened, maybe reflexively.

“I don’t know if I can.” She admitted, even as she squirmed to try and resettle to comfort. “How long was I out?”

“Five hours. Give or take.” His voice carried a strange reticence. She wondered how long he had slept of that time, but assumed he wouldn’t answer if asked. It was harrowing to think of herself vulnerable in sleep at his mercy.

“That’s a lot.” More than she usually got.

“Yeah.” That same strangeness, and he was being awfully quiet compared to earlier. Then again, while he seemed to love the sound of his own voice, he also hardly ever said anything unnecessary; neither of them were the type to talk simply to fill the air. With the quiet, the stillness, and the warmth in the curve of his body, Gracie ran an internal assessment. Her legs felt stiff and achy from staying in one position, and her skin itched uncomfortably, but sleeping in unpleasant conditions in jeans became the norm weeks ago. Her torso was still bare, because she hadn’t been able to raise her arm enough to get a sweater on after all, and had only struggled with it when Jacob was turned away from her. But the blankets and warm body behind her kept the chill away.

Then, the most pressing issue: it turned out that gamely pushing through her injury for the sake of intimidation didn’t help the healing process. The mad scramble over her radio certainly hadn’t helped, despite its hilarity in hindsight. Now that the adrenaline of waking had worn through, her shoulder hurt worse than it had before in a way that shot fire through her arm and blurred the thoughts in her head. It wasn’t yet disorienting, but not how she liked to operate either. Any sliver of incompetence meant fuck ups meant failure meant death.

“Thinking hard there.” He grunted, and Gracie had to consciously unclench her jaw before sighing.

“You’ve been quiet.” Turning it back around on him was easier than acknowledging the ruinous pain.

“How bad does it hurt?”

She hated him then, for reasons far more mundane then all the cult bullshit. It didn’t seem fair for him to call her out on her feelings when they hardly knew each other, discounting the strange game of intimidation they played together. Turnabout should probably be fairplay, but that didn’t mean she liked it. “Oh, you know, exactly like I got mauled by a cougar, stitched with no anesthesia, then had to wrestle a large man so he wouldn’t steal my fucking radio.”

“Could’ve just let me have it, honey. The Whitetail’s losing is inevitable, you’re only prolonging their suffering before the end.”

“Yeah, right, I’m the sort of person that would _just let you have it.”_ She rolled her eyes, and his low chuckle felt breathy against her neck, seemed nding another cascade of goosebumps over the area.

Playing nice had seemed like a good way to survive being trapped here with the enemy. Of course, dredging up _nice_ was hard enough for Gracie at the best of times, especially around Jacob Seed, and what little levity she managed to procure made things… odd. She enjoys oyed toying with him, pressing buttons and poking and prodding, but some moments had glimpses of sincerity, and those lingered in her mind. After he tackled her and she destroyed the radio, they’d _laughed_ , and she couldn’t get over the way his face looked when he wasn’t emanating harshness. Of course, that all ignored the fact that even when she wasn’t forcing herself to play nice, their banter skipped along anyway.

And it all doubly ignored the fact that she should, at the very least, have already arrested him.

“Planning on taking something for it?” He didn’t ask it in the rough voice he used when trying to be intimidating, but it felt distinctly like a test anyways. Gracie spread her fingers along the arm he had slung around her waist to even the odds, skimming fingers wide over the old burns she couldn’t quite see in the darkness, but could remember clearly anyway. If it had the intended effect of unsettling him, she didn’t know; he kept as much of a lock on his external reactions as she tried to. It unsettled _her_ , almost. She didn’t much mind when he loomed; yet it felt entirely different when she initiated.

“Nope.” Another internal inventory. ”Not here and definitely not on an empty stomach either.” He huffed out a strange, dismissive noise, and she readied herself for another spat, but instead of a biting comeback, she felt his arm slipping away from her. ”Hey—“

”We’re eating.” She couldn't sort out the tone of his voice, so she merely turned back to frown at him, but he was already untangling himself from her and leaving the bed. It was far, far colder without him. She tried not to linger on how his body had been a protective shield, the firm muscles more built and padded than her own rangy leanness, or how it had felt to be held.

Gracie shuffled up the mattress to sitting, pulling her knees to her chest under the blankets to conserve heat. The dark of the room offered only vague insights to his movements, but he approached the kitchen table where he’d earlier stacked supplies, and now returned.

”Midnight snack?” Gracie didn't actually know what time it was. Her radio— whose time display she’d been relying on since her rolex broke in the car chase escaping Joseph’s compound— lay in pieces on the ground. Probably late enough for it to count reasonably as breakfast, but the specific hour didn’t matter, so long as it remained cold enough for the snow to barricade them in. His large, shadowy form returned to her; a judgment she made based as much on the sound of his steps and intuition as on her weak vision in the dark. He sat next to her on the bed, and squinting, she could make out what he held. Soup cans. ”Midnight snack of cold soup in the dark?”

He huffed, but passed both the cans to her before standing again to go fiddle with his pack and lantern. A low, sputtering light filled the room, then settled to a steady glow. She blinked as her eyes adjusted, then watched Jacob with apprehension as he returned to her, a scowl on his face. “You’re needy, aren’t you.”

Gracie rolled her eyes. “I don’t think Joseph’s commandment to not murder me in cold blood extends to tending for me on my sickbed so you have no right to complain.” He stayed suspiciously non-verbal, and she restrained the urge to roll her eyes again. “Besides, we don’t need spilled soup in the bed making this any worse.”

Though, it hadn’t been as bad as she could have fathomed, not after she got accustomed to the unnerving skin crawling feeling of _being touched._ Her nerves never settled in his presence anyway, never settled at all nowadays, but they’d hit equilibrium over the course of the night. Practicality always overcame her own discomfort, especially since everything went to shit. She could see clear enough through the pain and the cold that her options for not dipping into hypothermia had been cozying up to Jacob or shooting him and cuddling his guts like a damn Tauntaun.

And it felt wrong to off him like that, when he’d helped her, even if it was on behalf of Joseph’s strange motivations. Whatever game they played hadn’t hit its breaking point yet, either, though she could hardly cite her personal fascination as reason enough to keep him alive when the Whitetails struggled to gain ground every single moment.

Gracie proffered up both soup cans, tilting the labels to him and arching her eyebrows. He grabbed some sort of noodle and vegetable medley from her far hand, leaving her with beef stew. Wedging her thumb under the cap, she popped it, and pulled the lid far enough to start downing cold broth, and chunks of mushy vegetables, and hard beef cubes straight from the chilled metal. A few sips in, the feeling of being watched tingled at her skin, and she slowed, lowering the can and licking her lips as she glanced at Jacob, who’d apparently never looked away from her.

She almost accused him of acting strangely, before she remembered he acted as herald for a doomsday cult and she ran around killing people with a trained wildcat and, finally, that they hardly knew each other. Strange was variable. Staring passed as normal for them.

The flicker of lantern light gave his icy blue eyes a softer warmth than usual, one that suited the bubble of quiet in their snowy prison, but not the dark expression on his face. She wished she hadn’t noticed that.

Cocking her head, she tapped her can against his in an approximation of a toast, and a smirk pulled at a corner of his mouth, breaking his stillness. Their unspoken exchange lingered, pulled, lurched in her gut, until whatever reverie possessed him dissipated.

It would be idiotic to not be wary of Jacob, but they’d shared enough quiet moments this night for her to settle in the temporary truce. She went about eating the rest of her soup, and beside her, he finally cracked his open as well. It spoke to the situation in the county that this was far from her first meal of cold, canned stew.

Leaning against his side when she finished hurt her shoulder like hell, but he radiated warmth like a fucking space heater and much of what had built under the blankets disappeared when he left, and combined with the cold broth, she ended up uncomfortably chilly again. He shifted to accommodate her without saying anything, and she closed her eyes, focusing hard on planning in order to shift mental space away from the pain. With food in her she felt less faint and bleary, but without heavy duty painkillers, the wound would be agonizing for some time. Yet another to add to her growing list of aches.

Staying the hell away from the FANG Center now seemed the safest bet, though she admitted to herself an insistent curiosity to see what test he would plan for her there. Sieging cult outposts filled her with a sick, giddy adrenaline; some addictive hit of triumph lurked in the careful sneaking and the clean kills, a twisted notion she knew she couldn’t let herself dwell on. Killing people and feeling nearly nothing reflected badly enough on her; she couldn’t acknowledge any _enjoyment_. Acknowledging that to some degree she even enjoyed Jacob— enjoyed the game, the rush of competition and challenge he presented— was bad enough. In any case, she knew she was fucked no matter what.

Because when the hell had she decided things were safe enough to close her eyes around him without the earlier excuse of sleep? Truce or not, she wasn’t an idiot.

He stiffened when she jolted upright, ignoring the pain that echoed up and down her shoulder, then shot her a questioning glance.

“I’m not gonna be able to sleep anymore.” With no small amount of wiggling, she managed to extricate herself from the blankets, and, subsequently, the warmth. Gracie grit her teeth against the shivers that attempted to pick back up, and scooped her backpack from the floor to the bed with her left hand. Time to put a real effort into getting a shirt on. The contents spilled as she tipped it from the bottom: a canteen, a baggie of dried non-perishables, a spare outfit, a tattered hardcover wilderness almanac, ammo, dynamite snagged from some of the local mines, and a myriad other scavenged odds and ends.

Gracie grabbed the turtleneck she’d tried to wrangle on earlier and frowned at it. It was her one spare sweater currently, and the close cut meant she couldn’t just sling it on without lifting her arm all the way up. And for all her bravado, that sounded painful as all fuck. Even while thinking, she kept awareness of Jacob in her periphery. He sat up, elbows on spread bent knees and shoulders curved in a hunch. He gave the impression of something lurking in the underbrush. Not unusual. Without meaning to, her eyes met his fully, and locked; his eyebrows furrowed in a harsh expression. He broke away and snatched at her closest fallen possession, the hardcover, and she felt herself tense again, watching as he toyed with it.

“Survival guide. City girl needs the help?” Her jaw clenched. He huffed, amused, then flicked back the cover and started thumbing through the pages. _Fuck._

“Ah—“ She almost moved to steal the book from his hands, but realized that interrupting him would only garner more scrutiny. He could have this secret of hers, then, however silly it made her look.

True to her expectation, when he opened the book, his face briefly flickered to confusion before snapping back to something predominantly unreadable, though it carried hints of his earlier teasing look. He plucked one of the flowers from the page, the delicate paper-thin pressed bloom contrasting oddly against his large hand. “Interesting hobby for a killer, honey.”

She didn’t have to defend herself, so she waited as he flipped through the pages and perused her collection of wildflowers gathered from around the county. The notable exception was any Bliss blooms. She was sick and tired of those.

“No Bliss.” He commented, like he could read her damn mind.

Gracie scowled. “Why would I?”

“You met Faith yet?”

“In passing.” Maybe. Things immediately after helping those holed up at the jail were fuzzy. She blearily remembered that asshole Burke, a whole field of pretty white flowers, and the young woman in a dress, speaking insistently with a fire in her eyes. And then— instead of dwelling on it, Gracie tried to squirm into her turtleneck without rotating at the shoulder, and utterly failed.

“Be careful around her, wildcat. She’s smarter than she acts.” He spoke in his low, intense growl, and her eyes shot back to his, and she slowly lowered her sweater as her lips parted in a retort that never clawed its way out of her mouth. She knew to be careful, she wanted to defend herself, but obviously she didn’t, given her current location. And Faith did present a more looming threat than she would have liked, in no small part because of those exact flowers Gracie avoided and the cleverness Jacob referred to. That he bothered to warn her at all set her on guard. She nodded, and ducked her head to fiddle with the damned turtleneck again. Her shoulder burned where she had tugged at the stitches, both last night and now. Jacob cleared his throat, once again commanding her attention. “Get over here.”

Against a faint better judgment echoing in the back of her mind, Gracie wandered closer to Jacob. For once she stood taller than him; looking down on him registered with a brief and bright electric satisfaction. He leaned closer, then over the edge of the bed and grabbed his own backpack before standing in a smooth manner at odds with his long limbs. And she was shorter once again.

It only took him a second to pull out a him-sized thermal, followed by an equally large black sweater. Gracie couldn’t help it— she burst out cackling. Something in her cracked a little. She couldn’t think about how this man’s brother tortured her best friend, or the bodies strung up along the highway. She tried to cultivate a necessary distance in her mind; laughter came as the only response. “This is getting ridiculous.”

“Already was.” He smirked, but the cruelty didn’t touch his eyes, only a carefully controlled flatness. Jacob took her wrist, calloused fingers wrapping easily around the width of it, and fed her arm through the bottom of the thermal. With a roll of her eyes, Gracie took over, shrugging it over her head and slipping her injured shoulder gingerly through the wide arm hole without having to lift her arm until it screamed in agony. The pain stayed manageable. Next came the black sweater, emblazoned in white with the cult’s symbol. Great, that’d be a fun one to explain.

_Yes, Eli, I know some of your people already don’t trust me due to a variety of sexist, racist, and, honestly, practical reasons, just thought I’d make it worse by showing up wearing the enemy flag. And, no, of course I haven’t ever shared a bed and body heat with Jacob Seed._

Tammy would shoot her in the head point blank if she found out how much time Gracie had spent one on one with Jacob, against her will or not. Gracie would say she stole it off a corpse after her own sweater tore, and omit the wildcat entirely. They didn’t need to know about her injury, and— a creeping feeling said they didn’t particularly care about her wellbeing, so long as she could keep fighting.

Jacob scoffed as she shimmied to adjust; once flat, they fell around the middle of her thighs, but provided a double layer of insulation and fought the chill. Gracie sucked in a deep breath to say something scathing, and ended up with— “You don’t really seem like the type for a cable knit sweater.”

“I don’t give a shit what I’m wearing as long as it fits the weather. Whether the Project’s brand is on it or not.”

“But the army jacket?” It seemed omnipresent on him. Except when it had been on her.

A corner of his mouth pulled up. “Unless specifically sanctioned, it’s illegal to wear any part of a uniform more than three months after an honorable discharge.”

She’d known that somewhere in the recesses of her mind, but his confirmation startled a laugh out of her, a few more bubbling from her throat after. He watched her with a fleeting smile, then moved to tug his own layers back on, lifting his arms to pull the plain grey sweater over his head.

She absolutely did not look at the flex of his muscles under where his thermal strained, and instead promptly turned around on her heel and walked away. However, the problem with pacing while trapped in a tiny cabin, was that she was trapped in a tiny cabin. The wall came too soon, so she spun to pace away, counting her steps as she went. Opposite the small kitchenette, and next to the fireplace, a rickety bookshelf held an assortment of cheap paperbacks and banged up board game boxes. Peering closer, Gracie plucked a box out, and turned to Jacob, who was fully clothed and no longer flexing, with her eyebrows raised.

He stared at her. “You’re fucking joking.”

“It’s tactical, you should love it. And I might go out of my mind sitting around trapped here.” Bouncing on her toes in the cold, alternately weary from her injury and keyed up from his mere presence, she certainly felt it. Waiting for the perfect moment to strike in a fight was one thing; waiting for some snow to melt while contained against her will was another. He looked her over critically, from her woolen socks to faded jeans to his own sweater slipping off her stitched shoulder to the box aloft in her hand.

She wondered what he was thinking. No, fuck wondering, she _needed_ to know what be was thinking. At all times. An obsessive need gradually built in her gut, a desire to pry him apart and pore over his every thought.

_What are you thinking. Who are you. Why are you doing this. What do you want from me. Is this really all for your brothers. Who are you, what do you want from me, who are you._

“I can’t think of a worse waste of time.”

“What else are we going to do? If you start doing push-ups while I’m unable to compete and do more, I’ll shoot you.”

Finally, he nodded. “Alright, wildcat, let’s play.”

On her way over, she slipped her boots back on, to a flicker of his eyebrows furrowing. Mud already stained the top of the comforter, and she wanted the extra layer around her feet, even as she wormed her way partially under the blankets again. The sweaters did help, much to her conflicted annoyance. Not as close as they were before; she could feel the heat of his warm body across from her anyway. Gracie resolved to not ever think about being held in his arms and the solid feeling of his chest against her back ever again. It might make it harder to kill him in the end.

He beat her handily at chess, then after another trip to the bookshelf, she pummeled him in Scrabble. They rotated through to Monopoly, at her suggestion, and he stared at the fluttery paper money and cards on the board as she attempted to balance them on the bed, face completely impassive and cold.

“There’s a lot of bits and pieces for this one.”

She glanced up. “You haven’t ever played this.”

“Didn’t have board games in juvie. Or at home.” _Home_ seemed an odd shape for his mouth. She guessed he would have rather chosen another word for it, if he could.

Every shred of information exchanged between them felt like its own test. She steeled herself up for another challenge with him, like the seconds before a competition bout.

“No public library game nights in Rome?” It was nasty to say, given the broad strokes she knew of his history. And, yes, his eyes flashed sharp, expression coiling to simmering anger.

“If there was I didn’t have time for it between trying to raise two boys and protect them from a beating.” She watched his jaw clench, surely working himself into another lecture on survival. What came out was more broken and bitter than his usual intensity. “Probably wasn’t. Rome’s a cesspool full of useless, selfish people. They wouldn’t waste their booze money on games for kids.”

Gracie actually paused to think before speaking, for once. “People escape their troubles however they can. The systemic poverty of the area certainly didn’t help anyone’s circumstances.”

“Dead end lives from the start. Military’ll use you up and spit you out, and the schools don’t get enough money to be worth a damn. Trapped in hell and too weak to crawl out.”

That was— a discussion. Of sociological relevance. Something more nuanced than she thought either of them currently had in them. The cycles of poverty and of violence shouldn’t spiral into a weak excuse for what his family had done to the county, but they couldn’t be blamed for their circumstances growing up. It was their choices _now_ that hurt people. “You got out.”

He huffed. “John and Joseph got me out.”

Ah. Her scattered reading of the Book of Joseph hadn’t gotten that far. There were better things to be doing, after all. She inclined her head like she’d known that.

Jacob continued slowly, his voice intent. Was he calling her bluff or genuinely making a point? “Joseph woke me up. Showed me I had a purpose left.”

“Are you trying to justify that to yourself or to me?” Gracie questioned, honestly wondering, but with a tone blunt enough that it came off as near-confrontational. She hadn’t been serious when she mentioned kidnapping him just to watch how things fell apart into chaos, but it was certainly tempting. Joseph obviously had a use for him, and Jacob’s delegated control of the mountains was no small thing, tactically. She wanted to take all Joseph’s plans, all his tools and manipulated toys, and smash them to bits.

Jacob shook his head. His expression seemed noncommittal for the subject. “I don’t need justification. The world’s ending, wildcat, we’re either gonna make it or not, and that all depends on if we’re strong enough to survive. Joseph’s doing something. That’s better than the deluded masses denying it.”

She tipped her head. “Does he think the nuclear threat is that bad or are we being strictly biblical here?”

“All leading to the same thing. It doesn’t matter.”

Gracie watched him a moment, absently biting her bottom lip as she tried to claw through the distance in his eyes. If he was going to keep being cryptic, then she wouldn't waste the energy. Like he said: it didn’t matter. The second she walked into the church was the same second that she gave up on deciphering Joseph’s delusions. “The goal is to own as much property as possible and bankrupt your opponents. Pretend you’re John and you’ll do fine.”

His turn to look exasperated, like he thought she’d give up on the board game if they tumbled into another argument. But he almost chuckled at her passing reference to his brother all the same. With that she spread the little character pieces, grabbing one without thought.

“And that is…” He eyed the piece in her hand disdainfully.

“Me? A cat.”

“Oh, fitting.” He was smirking at her now, and she pursed her lips in response.

“Watch out or I’ll make you be the shoe.”

“Right.” He drawled, clearly baiting her out. It came as a jarring contrast from his distance just half a minute ago. Jacob kept being— unexpected.

“Do you enjoy being difficult?”

“Do you?”

“Obviously.” He chuckled, and she didn’t stop the smile creeping onto her face. “What exactly clued you in?”

“The wanton destruction.” Now she laughed, proud to be a nuisance. “I knew it from the second I saw you, though, even in that little cop outfit of yours.”

“Little cop outfit! That is exactly what they’re called, god, you’re so fucking clever—“

As of now, they had a fully formed habit of being interrupted by radios. She should probably feel guilty about them speaking enough to have such a pattern in the first place. She didn’t. With her walkie in many tiny pieces, the sudden crackling could only come from his. It resolved into comprehensible speech when he reached down and twisted the dial.

“— epeat, Chosen Daniels and Jefferson searching for Herald Jacob. Any brothers or sisters with knowledge of his whereabouts please disclose. Over.”

If his people were looking for him— then the snow must have thawed. Truly, she hadn’t been squinting in the low lantern light for longer than she could recall, because, yes, the sun shone triumphantly through the curtained windows. _Well._

A lack of situational awareness around him could have gotten her killed. She shifted uneasily, but the fear didn’t come quite yet as she waited to see what he’d do. He hesitated a moment, then brought the radio to his mouth.

“Jacob here. You have no orders to commence a search party on my absence.” He looked at her as he spoke; his voice was scathing, but the amusement hadn’t left his eyes. She stifled a laugh behind her hand at how exhausted of them he sounded.

“Herald! The Father is at St Francis. He’d like to speak with you.”

The amusement— his and hers— faded fast.

“Tell him I’ll be back by dusk.” It was nothing but dismissive; Jacob clearly intended the exchange to end there.

“He said we were not to return without you, sir.”

Gracie cocked her head to the side, knowing her expression radiated the near-smug interest of learning something terribly fascinating about the dynamic between the brothers. Jacob scowled.

“I’m at the Cooper’s old cabin. Over.”

“ETA three minutes, sir. Over and out.”

That was far closer than expected.

They both jolted out of bed to their feet, and Gracie scrambled to grab her few wayward things and shoved them into her bag. Jacob rushed around the bed towards her, and for a brief, heartstopping moment she thought he might have decided the circumstances were right to bring her in. Instead, he leveraged her by both biceps— a dull pain echoed up her right— then shoved back. She didn’t know why, maybe the urgency of the situation or the look in his eyes, but she let him maneuver her backwards, foot between foot, in some rapid facsimile of a tango. Towards the bathroom, she realized with a jolt. Once at the doorway, he dropped her arms like the contact had been paining him, and they stood inches apart, untouching and staring. She searched for words, quiet ones, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “You’re not—“

He touched a hand to her cheek, along the thin line of an old scar, and the buzzing energy of fear through her veins spiked then settled. His steadiness overtook her, and for a moment Gracie simply looked up at him. His hand encompassed the whole side of her face, and he skimmed his thumb over her cheekbone, once. Jacob leaned closer, paused, and she stayed as unmoving as possible. Everything outside became irrelevant, all the danger bleeding away with the proximity of his pale eyes to hers, yet a manic adrenaline found its way to her anyways. Her skin buzzed just under the surface, and nowhere with more intensity than where his fingers met her skin. His jaw ticked as he clenched it, then he finally he spoke, his voice low. “Don’t tear those stitches, wildcat.”

When Gracie nodded, the rough pads of his fingers dragged along her skin. He stared at her searchingly for another long few heartbeats, then dropped his hand to her uninjured shoulder and gently pushed her into the bathroom. She didn’t resist, and nodded again when he pressed a finger to his lips to signal she be quiet. Then he backed away, and closed the door.

They had no reason to check here. Jacob had his Chosen— though only nominally his, apparently— on a tight leash. He wouldn’t let them find her. She tried to will down her pulse as she carefully settled herself to a crouch in the bathtub, pistol clutched in hand just in case. Some far away possibility told her this could be a trap, but the notion didn’t feel right anymore. It didn’t make sense.

Her pulse ran rampant from the ghostly burn of his hand on her cheek.

She heard blustering wind and muted shouts as Jacob opened the front door, then the chatter cut off instantly at the sound of his voice.

“So the sinner escaped—?“

“She must have gotten farther than we expected her to—“

“Stop. We’re done here.” No mention of her, no tremor of a lie in his voice, Jacob’s sharp command invited no arguments. He whistled, and a hesitant fear gripped her heart at the uncertainty of what that meant. There was a sudden flurry of noises, and the shuffling of boots, and then the front door slammed decidedly. Her alarm fizzled out like so many bubbles. From the other side of the door, silence.

She waited thirty minutes. Then another twenty, just to be certain. Finally, she stood, and peaked out the bathroom door.

Nothing. The only traces of their presence were the rumpled bed, scattered Monopoly pieces, and the cans Jacob had stacked on the small kitchen table.

Her field book of pressed flowers was gone. She was wearing Jacob Seed’s sweater. Even though she could perfectly track every moment of the last day from one to the next, she couldn’t comprehend the _why_ of any of it.

Gracie let out a measured exhale, and did one last sweep to ensure she had everything. Then she approached the front door with the same caution, and found the clearing and surrounding forest empty of human life. All clear.

With her full focus on ignoring the events of the last day, Gracie began the cold and solitary hike to the Wolf’s Den.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this got.... very long for how little happens. “character study” is my excuse for everything, but i promise the next thing posted in this series will have an actual plot!!

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> prompt for “snowed in!” from my bff that’s totally not in the fandom, bless her for listening to my rambles. comments are always appreciated(:


End file.
